Ajay Prakash Sawhney, the secretary at the ministry of information and technology (MeitY), has been given additional charge for the Department of Telecommunications from September 29 till October 14, the period for which Aruna Sundararajan is on leave.

Sawhney, who is a 1984 batch IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh Cadre, has been the MeitY secretary since June last year.

Sawhney will hold the additional charge at a time the department is in discussions with the law ministry to completely understand the ramifications of the Apex Court’s judgment on Aadhaar, barring the private companies from using biometric data for verification and will also hold discussions with private companies for complying with the Supreme Court’s judgment.

The judgment also requires private companies to destroy the Aadhaar data within six months.